Yes, there can be 'objective' knowledge, as 1+1 = 2 demonstrates. There can
be objective knowledge in the sense that the chemical make-up of granite is
such-and-such, and that granite from different world regions have a make-up
of e.g., such-and-such-&-andesite (which might make it a New Zealand rock),
and now a rock from Mauritius has added to the 'objective' debate by adding
to itself Zircons, elements that seem to belie the make-up of the granite.
However, the usually 8million year granite containing the 3billion year old
Zircons does not invalidate the 'knowledge' of granite, but improves upon
it (by remind us that Gondwana broke up, shifted and sank in equal measure,
etc.).
https://qz.com/901049/mauritius-has-a-lost-continent-lying-underneath-it-say-geologists/
That said, what about design knowledge? Or social knowledge? I offer the
following:
"There cannot be any space for either truly subjective or objective goals
in modern research methods - instead we may do far worse than look back to
the fifth century B.C. and the design offered by Protagoras in asking that
we discard all notions of objective or subjective meaning from a theory of
meaning. The human capacity for attributing meaning stems from each
individual brain, therefore it cannot be objective, while the social
capacity for attributing meaning would preclude it being private or
arbitrary, thus not subjective, since the attributed meaning would be
common to all of us. Rather, Protagoras talks about "*the fitness *of a
conceptual system … Fitness is not a measure of correspondence to objective
reality but rather a measure of success. By inference, fitness is a measure
of capacity …" (Turner, 1992). The *fitness *of a designed research system
would then, by true communication standards, be a measure of the successful
capacity of a research entity (the holistic project comprising of process,
theory, development, influences, refinements, and applications) to make
itself known in all its potential, including the artefact/project (which
has one role to play) as well as the thesis/text (which has another role to
play), each as part of the *emergent properties *of the whole, each
facilitating the *emergence of new generative orders *which go beyond
expectation, even."
Johann
--
Dr. Johann van der Merwe
Independent Design Researcher
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